Queer, Jewish, and theater-themed: What’s not to like?
At eighth grader Lacey’s new school, a couple in the fall play kiss during the final performance—it’s a student-led tradition that goes back decades.
When 13-year-old Lacey Lowenstein is cast as Kim in Bye Bye Birdie, she realizes she has duets with three potential kissing partners. Her new friends, Isa and Nell, make it their mission to help her pick who to kiss: bro-ey Andre or shy Jaden. But the co-star she really wants to kiss is fellow new kid Violet. Still, Lacey can’t stop thinking about the last day of seventh grade, when something happened with her lifelong best friend, Grace, who’s pansexual. Meanwhile, Lacey’s bat mitzvah fell through the cracks as her family planned their cross-country move. She connects with the supportive Rabbi Herrera and plans to celebrate her bat mitzvah the day after the play’s final performance. Lacey is a relatably flawed protagonist, choosing to impress mean girl Nell even when it means hurting people she cares for. She learns her lesson and connects it to her d’var Torah, or bat mitzvah speech. Lacey grew up with supportive queer role models—Grace’s moms. Still, when she comes out, her own father is dismissive and expresses concern that she’ll be socially excluded. While he later apologizes, this plotline could have been further fleshed out to make his change of heart feel more earned. Many central characters present white. Rabbi Herrera and Isa are cued Latine, and Jaden has dark skin.
Queer, Jewish, and theater-themed: What’s not to like? (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780593695135
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
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